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bookemdanno
Joined: 30 Apr 2008
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 Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 8:28 am Post subject: CLINT EASTWOOD TO SPIKE LEE: "MAKE MY DAY. SHUT UP" |
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Well, it's been a long, long time in coming but motormouth Spike Lee, the self-appointed Black Director of the Ages and Poster Child for the NAACP might have finally got his comeuppance, or at least a wake-up call.
The other day Clint Eastwood, a far more talented director and also actor, told Lee he could stick it where the sun don't shine. In the age of political correctness, it's refreshing to find a Hollywood star that doesn't pander to every whining promoter of Black victimhood and in trying to make something noble out of the political promo passing as a film, Do the Right Thing, which advocated the wrong thing (even Malcolm X eventually saw the light of day, coming over to King's way of thinking just before his "brothers" at the Nation of Islam did him in)
This from of all sources, a Left-wing paper from Britain:
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Dirty Harry comes clean
Jeff Dawson
Friday June 6, 2008
The Guardian
Clint Eastwood folds his gangly frame behind a clifftop table at the Hotel Du Cap, a few miles up the coast from Cannes, sighs deeply, and squints out over the Mediterranean. "Has he ever studied the history?" he asks, in that familiar near-whisper.
The "he" is Spike Lee, and the reason Eastwood is asking is because of something Lee had said about Eastwood's Iwo Jima movie Flags of Our Fathers, while promoting his own war movie, Miracle at St Anna, about a black US unit in the second world war. Lee had noted the lack of African-Americans in Eastwood's movie and told reporters: "That was his version. The negro version did not exist."
Eastwood has no time for Lee's gripes. "He was complaining when I did Bird [the 1988 biopic of Charlie Parker]. Why would a white guy be doing that? I was the only guy who made it, that's why. He could have gone ahead and made it. Instead he was making something else." As for Flags of Our Fathers, he says, yes, there was a small detachment of black troops on Iwo Jima as a part of a munitions company, "but they didn't raise the flag. The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn't do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people'd go, 'This guy's lost his mind.' I mean, it's not accurate."
Lee shouldn't be demanding African-Americans in Eastwood's next picture, either. Changeling is set in Los Angeles during the Depression, before the city's make-up was changed by the large black influx. "What are you going to do, you gonna tell a fuckin' story about that?" he growls. "Make it look like a commercial for an equal opportunity player? I'm not in that game. I'm playing it the way I read it historically, and that's the way it is. When I do a picture and it's 90% black, like Bird, I use 90% black people."
Eastwood pauses, deliberately - once it would have provided him with the beat in which to spit out his cheroot before flinging back his poncho - and offers a last word of advice to the most influential black director in American movies. "A guy like him should shut his face."
Eastwood knows how to handle controversy. Four years ago, his boxing flick Million Dollar Baby, which garnered him best picture and best director Oscars (giving him five in total, including two for Unforgiven and a premature lifetime achievement gong back in 1995), was attacked by Christian groups. They had objected to the plot's "assisted suicide" of a paralysed athlete. "People who hadn't even seen the movie were saying that it's pro-euthanasia, but it wasn't," Eastwood says. "If you had asked Frankie [his character in the film], 'Do you believe in euthanasia?', he'd have probably said no. But that was the circumstances of the moment. Highly dramatic circumstances."
And 37 years ago, he starred in a film that has been a bone of contention ever since, and which is the reason for our conversation today. Dirty Harry, the film that liberals have long argued was little more than an argument for summary justice, is being rereleased in DVD form, packaged with its quartet of siblings (Magnum Force, The Enforcer, Sudden Impact and The Dead Pool), as part of Warner Brothers' 85th birthday celebrations.
Dirty Harry - the story of a cop railing against bureaucracy and pursuing criminals according to his own whim - has been so imitated that it is hard to imagine the revulsion that spilled over it upon its release. The New Yorker's critic, Pauline Kael, called it "fascist", and other reviewers heaped similar scorn on it. They wondered whether holding a .44 Magnum in a suspect's face was the best way to pursue justice; they wondered whether the San Francisco setting was a slap at one of America's most liberal cities; even the CND belt buckle sported by Scorpio, the serial killer in the film, was interpreted as a swipe at the left. With the cop thriller supplanting the western as Hollywood's action genre of choice, Eastwood was surely the political as well as cinematic successor to John Wayne.
But moviegoers took little notice of those who attacked the film. They flocked to the cinemas, Dirty Harry's dialogue passed into common parlance, and it now occupies an important if uneasy place in film history.
"Of course people built a lot of connotations into the film that weren't necessarily there." Eastwood grins. "Being a contrary sort of person, I figured there had been enough politically correct crap going around. The police were not held in great favour particularly, the Miranda decisions had come down [forcing police to read arrested suspects their rights], people were thinking about the plight of the accused. I thought, 'Let's do a picture about the plight of the victim.'"
Wayne had turned the film down, as had Steve McQueen, Robert Mitchum and various others. Frank Sinatra was set to star until, according to showbiz lore, tendonitis in his wrist prevented him from handling the Magnum's heavy recoil. "Probably just bullshit," says Eastwood. But Ol' Blue Eyes' loss was Young Blue Eyes' gain. Eastwood brought director/collaborator Don Siegel to the project. And, courtesy of a much misquoted line - "You've got to ask yourself one question: do I feel lucky? Well do ya, punk?" - the picture turned Eastwood from cowboy star into everyman icon.
That same year, Eastwood directed his first film, Play Misty for Me. With Dirty Harry having established him as Warner Brothers' surest banker, he negotiated a quid pro quo: the studio would indulge his personal projects, such as Bronco Billy or Honkytonk Man, the kind of fare that would shape him as the director we know today, as long as he kept on cranking out the blockbusters, even if that meant working with an orangutan.
Sergio Leone, who directed Eastwood in his breakthrough role in the Man With No Name trilogy of spaghetti westerns, said he liked the actor because he had only two expressions: "one with the hat, one without it". These days it would be stretching it to suggest that Eastwood's range is quite that broad, his face seemingly fixed in a beatific beam, the sort of blissful countenance that once had him pegged in a scurrilous - and erroneous - piece of showbiz gossip as Stan Laurel's love child. The skin on his cheeks certainly seems tauter than one might expect of a man of his vintage. The contentment of his autumn years or the proverbial "bit of work"? Frankly, you can only wonder.
Nevertheless, he's imposingly tall (6ft 2in), sporty-lean, and could probably knock both 10 years off the 78 he has clocked up and seven bells out of anyone who messes with him, the result of relentless exercising, a strict diet and, probably, fatherhood late in life. In an arrangement at which even Ken Livingstone might raise eyebrows, Eastwood has had seven children with five different women, including an 11-year-old daughter with his current wife, Dina. It surely accounts for the emotional content of some of his recent films, not least Changeling, which had been in competition for the Palme d'Or and, like the lauded Mystic River, concerns child abduction.
There are actually echoes of Dirty Harry in Changeling, Eastwood says, and he's not making any concessions to liberals: "I get a kick out of it because the judge convicts the killer to two years in solitary confinement, and then to be hanged. In 1928 they said: 'You can spend two years thinking about it and then we're going to kill you.' Nowadays they're sitting there worrying about how putting a needle in is a cruel and unusual punishment, the same needle you would have if you had a blood test."
The politics are evidently always simmering with Eastwood. By the time Ronald Reagan was in the White House quoting Eastwood's "Go ahead, make my day" from Sudden Impact in a speech about tax cuts ("I must have heard it about 10,000 times," says Eastwood), he was shaping up to become the non-partisan mayor of the California town of Carmel, where he was sympathetic to environmental concerns and less sympathetic to big business.
Eastwood still likes to let his views be known, often forcefully. In 2005, he vowed he'd kill Michael Moore if the documentarian ever showed up at his house, the way he had doorstepped Charlton Heston in Bowling for Columbine. This March he was sacked from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's California state parks commission for objecting to the building of a toll road through a national forest. But though he has been associated in the public mind with Republican viewpoints, he's something of an individualist. "I don't pay attention to either side," he claims. "I mean, I've always been a libertarian. Leave everybody alone. Let everybody else do what they want. Just stay out of everybody else's hair. So I believe in that value of smaller government. Give politicians power and all of a sudden they'll misuse it on ya."
Has he declared for anybody in this electoral cycle? "You know, I haven't really," he says. "My wife used to be an anchorwoman in Arizona, so she knew John McCain and she liked him and I kinda liked him. In fact, we sort of supported him when he was running the first time against Bush eight years ago. But we haven't been active as yet. It's kind of a zoo out there right now. So I think I'll kinda let things percolate."
These days Eastwood doesn't really look back on his old films, though he mentions a viewing of The Outlaw Josey Wales, a film some regard as his masterpiece. He meant to watch for five minutes, but ended up sitting all the way through. "The films that I've done in recent years are the ones I remember the most," he says. "I guess I'm living in the present more than the past."
One thing he has made clear is that he will definitely not be making Dirty Harry 6, despite rumours to the contrary. "Some idiot came up with some theory," he says. The crime flick Gran Torino, which he is due to film at some point, is emphatically not part of the Dirty Harry cycle. "Not at my age," he stresses. "There are certain age limits on police officers. They'd have retired me out at 65."
But there's one film project on the cards that might interest Spike Lee. Eastwood's next project, The Human Factor, is about Nelson Mandela and how he used the country's victory in the 1995 Rugby World Cup as a means of fostering national unity. Will he be sticking with the historical record on that one? He laughs. "Yeah, I'm not going to make Nelson Mandela a white guy." |
Hey, Spike, just cuz you're Black doesn't mean that every frickin flick you produce has to have a nearly all-Black cast on a Black--er--African American--theme. Try branchin' out.
So what would you say to Mr. Lee? |
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jaykimf
Joined: 24 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 10:06 am Post subject: Re: CLINT EASTWOOD TO SPIKE LEE: "MAKE MY DAY. SHUT UP& |
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| bookemdanno wrote: |
Mr. Eastwood said " As for Flags of Our Fathers, he says, yes, there was a small detachment of black troops on Iwo Jima as a part of a munitions company, "but they didn't raise the flag. The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn't do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people'd go, 'This guy's lost his mind.' I mean, it's not accurate." |
That would be a great explanation, IF, only the 6 persons who raised the flag were in the movie. I haven't seen the movie, but I assume many more people than the 6 who raised the flag were in the movie. The issue of the absence of blacks in the movie was not initially raised by Mr. Lee, but by the Black veterans who fought on Iwo Jima . http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/oct/21/usa.filmnews
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Yvonne Latty, a New York University professor and author of We Were There: Voices of African-American Veterans (2004), wrote to Eastwood and the film's producers pleading with them to include the experience of black soldiers. HarperCollins, the book's publishers, sent the director a copy, but never heard back.
"It would take only a couple of extras and everyone would be happy," she said. "No one's asking for them to be the stars of the movies, but at least show that they were there. This is the way a new generation will think about Iwo Jima. Once again it will be that African-American people did not serve, that we were absent. It's a lie." |
Doesn't seem at all unreasonable to me.
| bookemdanno wrote: |
Hey, Spike, just cuz you're Black doesn't mean that every frickin flick you produce has to have a nearly all-Black cast on a Black--er--African American--theme. Try branchin' out.
So what would you say to Mr. Lee? |
I would say that if Mr. Lee wants to make movies with African-American themes, that is entirely his prerogative. If you don't like him or his movies, that's too bad-- don't watch them. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 10:46 am Post subject: |
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Hey, Spike, just cuz you're Black doesn't mean that every frickin flick you produce has to have a nearly all-Black cast on a Black--er--African American--theme. Try branchin' out.
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Have you seen Summer Of Sam, 25th Hour, or Inside Man? |
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djsmnc
Joined: 20 Jan 2003
Location: Dave's ESL Cafe
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| Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 1:15 pm Post subject: Re: CLINT EASTWOOD TO SPIKE LEE: "MAKE MY DAY. SHUT UP& |
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| jaykimf wrote: |
| bookemdanno wrote: |
Mr. Eastwood said " As for Flags of Our Fathers, he says, yes, there was a small detachment of black troops on Iwo Jima as a part of a munitions company, "but they didn't raise the flag. The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn't do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people'd go, 'This guy's lost his mind.' I mean, it's not accurate." |
That would be a great explanation, IF, only the 6 persons who raised the flag were in the movie. I haven't seen the movie, but I assume many more people than the 6 who raised the flag were in the movie. The issue of the absence of blacks in the movie was not initially raised by Mr. Lee, but by the Black veterans who fought on Iwo Jima . http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/oct/21/usa.filmnews
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That's ridiculous. I thought the film did a great job of portraying discrimination against Native americans and the consequences of which affected the life of one of the flag raisers personally. With that aspect of the film in mind, which is a BIG part of it, what would necessitate the inclusion of more negroes? It doesn't make sense. Not every film needs to include every downtrodden populace and their suffering equally. I have to side with Clint on this one all the way. |
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bookemdanno
Joined: 30 Apr 2008
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| Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 8:30 pm Post subject: |
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Jay Kim:
I'm guessing you're a gyopo with a healthy sense of minority entitlement nursefed to you courtesy of the guilt-laden White liberal media establishment.
If Spike Lee were White, his films would be a total wash. Because there are so precious few Black directors, however, he gets to see the light of day instead of the film cutting floor. And the fact that he constantly appeals to false notions of justice and equity, the Hollywood liberal moguls grease his squeaky wheel. He doesn't have half the talent of Eastwood, whose first career was acting.
AS EASTWOOD POINTED OUT, the film is about the "Flag Bearers," not a handful of Blacks in the munitions crew at base camp.
Professor Latty once again reveals her insecurity and Lee once again reveals that Blacks in Hollywood now feel entitled to be a part of every picture. Soon he'll be pushing for affirmative action in this regard. It's so pathetic.
Latty is a typical whiny NYU leftist rag professor who doesn't have an ounce of creative talent so she resorts to lame criticism of a film which did in fact intend to focus on the six flag raisers. She has nothing better to do with her time.
But you're right in one respect: I don't need to watch his films. Problem is, if I don't I then can't criticize his work without being accused of racist ignorance? So either way I get screwed.
I suggest that you and OTOH get a hold of the bestseller Losing the Race by John McWhorter, a Black linguistics professor at UC-Berkeley. He articulates the cult of victimhood as well as anyone.
OTOH: I've know of those films and they're exceptions to prove the rule. None of them depicts positive aspects of mainstream White society, either. Lee is a propagandist first and filmmaker second. The sooner that you realize that, the sooner you'll understand my irritation. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 10:16 pm Post subject: |
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Inside Man was a great movie. So was Do the Right Thing. The 25th Hour was well-done and I thought a fitting tribute to NYC soon after 9/11.
Why should he do movies that depict white society in a positive light? I certainly wouldn't say 2 of those 3 movies are negative towards white either, but instead, :gasp: neutral. Hell, in the case of Do the Right Thing, I'd say he rips up pretty much everyone to some degree. |
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On the other hand
Joined: 19 Apr 2003
Location: I walk along the avenue
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| Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 10:30 pm Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
Inside Man was a great movie. So was Do the Right Thing. The 25th Hour was well-done and I thought a fitting tribute to NYC soon after 9/11.
Why should he do movies that depict white society in a positive light? I certainly wouldn't say 2 of those 3 movies are negative towards white either, but instead, :gasp: neutral. Hell, in the case of Do the Right Thing, I'd say he rips up pretty much everyone to some degree. |
I can only assume that Steve hasn't actually seen the movies in question(by which I mean the "white" movies), otherwise he wouldn't be suggesting that they portray white society in a negative light. They pretty much just portray flawed human beings, with problems and shortcomings like anyone else. The flaws are not specifically connected with their whiteness.
Aesthetically, I'm not a huge fan of Lee's. I found Do The Right Thing quite boring, actually. But as a commentator on American society, I think he gets pigeonholed as this one-note, angry young black man. Not an entirely fair characterization.
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The 25th Hour was well-done and I thought a fitting tribute to NYC soon after 9/11.
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Yeah, he dedicated that movie to the firefighters who rescued people on 9/11, even naming the unit in his dedication. And the opening credits, with the memorial lights emanating up from the site, was rather stirring. |
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happeningthang
Joined: 26 Apr 2003
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| Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2008 10:37 pm Post subject: |
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| bookemdanno wrote: |
OTOH: I've know of those films and they're exceptions to prove the rule. None of them depicts positive aspects of mainstream White society, either. Lee is a propagandist first and filmmaker second. The sooner that you realize that, the sooner you'll understand my irritation. |
Isn't this just what your article says about Eastwood? |
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The Bobster
Joined: 15 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 1:08 am Post subject: |
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| bookemdanno wrote: |
Jay Kim:
I'm guessing you're a gyopo with a healthy sense of minority entitlement nursefed to you courtesy of the guilt-laden White liberal media establishment.
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I'm just curious ...
Is there some relevance to be found in your surmises regarding the race of someone who decides tro join our discussions, and if so, what could it possibly be? If not relevant, why grace us all with your lack of classiness in wanting to talk about who a poster is rather than what they have to say? And what does any of that have to say about your thesis, which seems to be that Eastwood is better than Lee because ... what? Because he talks the same kind of trash to Lee that Lee talks to anyone else at any other time or place?
I only ask because there seems to be a certain contingent around here that, whenever matters of race come up for discussion, seem to want to promote something that's beig called "color-blindness,' and yet ... well, you look closely at what such folk are actually saying and it's not hard to see that color is something they are VERY conscious about - as when you decide you want to "guess" at someone's racial heritage, probably based solely on their username.
Anyway, kudos to you for standing up and looking "the guilt-laden White Liberal media establishment" right in the face, staring down that behemoth of a self-righteous mofo. Damn. You be da man.
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| If Spike Lee were White, his films would be a total wash. Because there are so precious few Black directors, however, he gets to see the light of day instead of the film cutting floor. |
The first sentence isn't true, of course, and several here have already voiced suspicions that you haven't seen enough of his films to be able to say what you say - the second part begs a question, though, possibly, which is, why are there (still) so few black directors? There's gotta be something wrong, because well, Spike Lee is olnly ALLOWED to make films at all because he is black, right? And all us guilt-laden liberals need to feel less guilty, and all ...
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| But you're right in one respect: I don't need to watch his films. Problem is, if I don't I then can't criticize his work without being accused of racist ignorance? So either way I get screwed. |
Did you get screwed, or did you screw yourself? What was that I heard about a cult of victimhood? You can be fuill of ignorance by the way, without being full of racist ignorance ... depends on the choices you make about what you'd rather not know.
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| OTOH: I've know of those films and they're exceptions to prove the rule. None of them depicts positive aspects of mainstream White society, either. Lee is a propagandist first and filmmaker second. The sooner that you realize that, the sooner you'll understand my irritation. |
Shall I make the point that depicting positive aspects of ANY segment of society is not the job of a serious filmmaker - and if Lee has any faults (he does, of course) then one of them is excessive seriousness - and I'd go further and say that a fillmaker who TRIED to depict "positive" askects of any group within society would be the one who is guilty of propaganda.
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Hey, Spike, just cuz you're Black doesn't mean that every frickin flick you produce has to have a nearly all-Black cast on a Black--er--African American--theme. Try branchin' out.
So what would you say to Mr. Lee? |
I'd say, "Spike, don't sweat it too much if people want to rake you over the coals for stuff that ain't true, (because 'I don't need to watch his films') and, oh, by the way, not everybody likes every single one of your movies, and I hope that's okay with you. It is? Great. You got the right perspective, then."
Perspective's something a lot of us could use, by the way, and if Spike Lee has any one best talent, it's giving people something to talk about so that points of view get heard and different opinions get expressed. It's a healthy thing. It's sort of a, heck, a liberal thing, you know, listening to other points of view besides your own, or at least making room for them to be heard?
It's also, um, an American thing. I like it, and how about you?
Last edited by The Bobster on Sat Jun 07, 2008 4:42 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 1:22 am Post subject: |
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Bobster: I think you have it the other-way-around re: who started raking whom over the coals first, at least on this one.
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| the reason Eastwood is asking is because of something Lee had said about Eastwood's Iwo Jima movie Flags of Our Fathers, while promoting his own war movie, Miracle at St Anna, about a black US unit in the second world war. Lee had noted the lack of African-Americans in Eastwood's movie... |
I sympathize with Clint Eastwood.
Where does the law state that filmmakers must construct films in a way that satisfy race, class, and gender polemicists? Why can Spike Lee, backed by the thought police, not let a thousand flowers bloom and simply make his own film without knocking Eastwood's?
That being said, I think Spike Lee makes first-class films, too. |
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nautilus
Joined: 26 Nov 2005
Location: Je jump, Tu jump, oui jump!
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| Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 1:57 am Post subject: |
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Eastwood is probably the most boring American actor ever.
really dull.
His directing was hopeless as well. |
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agentX
Joined: 12 Oct 2007
Location: Jeolla province
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| Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 2:27 am Post subject: |
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Spike Lee responds (and quite strongly, too):
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"First of all, the man is not my father and we're not on a plantation either," Spike Lee told ABCNEWS.com about Clint Eastwood. "He's a great director. He makes his films, I make my films. The thing about it though, I didn't personally attack him. And a comment like 'a guy like that should shut his face' -- come on Clint, come on. He sounds like an angry old man right there."
"If he wishes, I could assemble African-American men who fought at Iwo Jima and I'd like him to tell these guys that what they did was insignificant and they did not exist," he said. "I'm not making this up. I know history. I'm a student of history. And I know the history of Hollywood and its omission of the one million African-American men and women who contributed to World War II."
"Not everything was John Wayne, baby..."
"I never said he should show one of the other guys holding up the flag as black. I said that African-Americans played a significant part in Iwo Jima," he said. "For him to insinuate that I'm rewriting history and have one of the four guys with the flag be black ... no one said that. It's just that there's not one black in either film. And because I know my history, that's why I made that observation." |
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/05/clint-eastwood-spike-lee_n_105584.html
Will this spur Spike Lee on to make a WWII movie in the vein of "The Tuskegee Airmen?" |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 2:34 am Post subject: |
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| And so spoketh yet another race, class, and gender control freak... |
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jaykimf
Joined: 24 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 8:03 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
Where does the law state that filmmakers must construct films in a way that satisfy race, class, and gender polemicists? |
Of course Hollywood filmmakers have no obligation , legal or otherwise, to portray blacks in heroic roles, or in any other favorable manner. They have no obligation to acknowledge the contributions that blacks made to the war effort. They have the freedom to portray them as pimps or drug dealers or to ignore them and not portray them at all. Mr. Eastwood chose not to use any blacks in that film.
He's the filmmaker, he has the right to make that choice. On the other hand, why not include a black or two in minor roles or as extras? What would it hurt? The fact is that almost 900 black servicemen fought on Iwo Jima. Mr Eastwood's contention that because none of the 6 flag raisers was black, it would be historically inaccurate to show blacks in any of the other of the film's roles is just ludicrous. |
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jaykimf
Joined: 24 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 8:57 am Post subject: |
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| bookemdanno wrote: |
Jay Kim:
I'm guessing you're a gyopo with a healthy sense of minority entitlement nursefed to you courtesy of the guilt-laden White liberal media establishment. |
You guessed wrong Steve. I'm 100% white, of mixed English, German and Belgian descent. Does that make what I have said any more or less true? You on the other hand give the impression of being a hateful bitter old man. Why does it bother you so much that an African-American director should choose to make films focused on the African American experience?
| bookemdanno wrote: |
| AS EASTWOOD POINTED OUT, the film is about the "Flag Bearers," not a handful of Blacks in the munitions crew at base camp. |
Obviously you didn't read the article to which I provided a link. I guess I'll have to quote the entire article for you. Try reading it before you respond.
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On February 19 1945 Thomas McPhatter found himself on a landing craft heading toward the beach on Iwo Jima.
"There were bodies bobbing up all around, all these dead men," said the former US marine, now 83 and living in San Diego. "Then we were crawling on our bellies and moving up the beach. I jumped in a foxhole and there was a young white marine holding his family pictures. He had been hit by shrapnel, he was bleeding from the ears, nose and mouth. It frightened me. The only thing I could do was lie there and repeat the Lord's prayer, over and over and over."
Sadly, Sgt McPhatter's experience is not mirrored in Flags of Our Fathers, Clint Eastwood's big-budget, Oscar-tipped film of the battle for the Japanese island that opened on Friday in the US. While the film's battle scenes show scores of young soldiers in combat, none of them are African-American. Yet almost 900 African-American troops took part in the battle of Iwo Jima, including Sgt McPhatter.
The film tells the story of the raising of the stars and stripes over Mount Suribachi at the tip of the island. The moment was captured in a photograph that became a symbol of the US war effort. Eastwood's film follows the marines in the picture, including the Native American Ira Hayes, as they were removed from combat operations to promote the sale of government war bonds.
Mr McPhatter, who went on to serve in Vietnam and rose to the rank of lieutenant commander in the US navy, even had a part in the raising of the flag. "The man who put the first flag up on Iwo Jima got a piece of pipe from me to put the flag up on," he says. That, too, is absent from the film.
"Of all the movies that have been made of Iwo Jima, you never see a black face," said Mr McPhatter. "This is the last straw. I feel like I've been denied, I've been insulted, I've been mistreated. But what can you do? We still have a strong underlying force in my country of rabid racism."
Melton McLaurin, author of the forthcoming The Marines of Montford Point and an accompanying documentary to be released in February, says that there were hundreds of black soldiers on Iwo Jima from the first day of the 35-day battle. Although most of the black marine units were assigned ammunition and supply roles, the chaos of the landing soon undermined the battle plan.
"When they first hit the beach the resistance was so fierce that they weren't shifting ammunition, they were firing their rifles," said Dr McLaurin.
The failure to transfer the active role played by African-Americans at Iwo Jima to the big screen does not surprise him. "One of the marines I interviewed said that the people who were filming newsreel footage on Iwo Jima deliberately turned their cameras away when black folks came by. Blacks are not surprised at all when they see movies set where black troops were engaged and never show on the screen. I would like to say that it was from ignorance but anybody can do research and come up with books about African-Americans in world war two. I think it has to do with box office and what producers of movies think Americans really want to see."
He added: "I want to see these guys get their due. They're just so anxious to have their story told and to have it known."
Roland Durden, another black marine, landed on the beach on the third day. "When we hit the shore we were loaded with ammunition and the Japanese hit us with mortar." Private Durden was soon assigned to burial detail, "burying the dead day in, day out. It seemed like endless days. They treated us like workmen rather than marines."
Mr Durden, too, is wearied but unsurprised at the omissions in Eastwood's film. "We're always left out of the films, from John Wayne on," he said. Mr Durden ascribes to both the conspiracy as well as the cock-up theory of history. "They didn't want blacks to be heroes. This was pre-1945, pre-civil rights."
A spokesperson for Warner Bros said: "The film is correct based on the book." The omission was first remarked upon in a review by Fox News columnist Roger Friedman, who noted that the history of black involvement at Iwo Jima was recorded in several books, including Christopher Moore's recent Fighting for America: Black Soldiers - the Unsung Heroes of World War II. "They weren't in the background at all," said Moore. "The people carrying the ammunition were 90% black, so that's an opportunity to show black soldiers. These are our films and very often they become our history, historical documents."
Yvonne Latty, a New York University professor and author of We Were There: Voices of African-American Veterans (2004), wrote to Eastwood and the film's producers pleading with them to include the experience of black soldiers. HarperCollins, the book's publishers, sent the director a copy, but never heard back.
"It would take only a couple of extras and everyone would be happy," she said. "No one's asking for them to be the stars of the movies, but at least show that they were there. This is the way a new generation will think about Iwo Jima. Once again it will be that African-American people did not serve, that we were absent. It's a lie."
The first chapter to James Bradley's book Flags of Our Fathers, which forms the basis of the movie, opens with a quotation from president Harry Truman. "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." It would provide a fitting endnote to Eastwood's film.
First person
Sgt Thomas McPhatter, 8th US Marine Corps ammunition company, was at Iwo Jima in 1945. These are his memories
We set up an ammunition dump and the Japanese spotted it because they were firing mortars. There was black powder and smoke everywhere. It's unbelievable what you can smell. Men losing their legs ...
"On the second night we were hit again by mortar fire. All of a sudden the dump was burning. I said the whole dump's going to go soon, and we couldn't put the fire out. We made our way to the beach ... when I got to the beach my eyes were burning and the dispensary put something on my face. Two days later they start ammunition drops from planes. They started dropping the ammo in multi-coloured parachutes like an ice-cream canopy. So you've got to chase ammunition with the enemy firing on you. Oh, Lord. My platoon leader put us in for a commendation but that never got anywhere. It was beyond the call of duty.
"Our last involvement was when we turned back a banzai attack ... the last battle on Iwo Jima. There were army people there who had come after us to repair the airfield who were living in tents ... they came out of their holes with their swords drawn, high-hollering 'Banzai!' The Japanese cut the guy ropes and they were running them through the canvas with their swords. When they came through our area, we were still sleeping in the dirt. We cut them down. It was the black soldiers that did it. It's never been recognised.
About this article
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This article appeared in the Guardian on Saturday October 21 2006 on p25 of the International news section. It was last updated at 00:16 on October 21 2006. |
| bookemdanno wrote: |
Latty is a typical whiny NYU leftist rag professor who doesn't have an ounce of creative talent so she resorts to lame criticism of a film which did in fact intend to focus on the six flag raisers. She has nothing better to do with her time. |
Why so bitter Steve? Is it because Professor Latty has a cushy job at NYU while the best you can do is a third rate job in an academic backwater like Korea? How's your career going Steve? From your posts, I'd say you're the whiny one. By the way, don't you have anything better to do with your time? Shouldn't you be doing some of your important research ? Why are you wasting your time whining about Mr. Lee? |
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